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3 Republicans Criticize Obama’s Endorsement of Mosque

WASHINGTON — Three leading Republicans reacted negatively to President Obama’s statements in favor of a mosque and Muslim community center whose construction has been proposed for a building near the site formerly occupied by the World Trade Center.

John Boehner, the Ohio Republican who is the House minority leader, said: ”The decision to build this mosque so close to the site of ground zero is deeply troubling, as is the president’s decision to endorse it.”

“The American people certainly don’t support it,” Mr. Boehner said.

Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, said that while the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque, doing so needlessly offends too many people.

“President Obama is wrong,” Mr. King said. “It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of ground zero. While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much. The right and moral thing for President Obama to have done was to urge Muslim leaders to respect the families of those who died and move their mosque away from Ground Zero. Unfortunately the president caved into political correctness."

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“There is nothing surprising in the president’s continued pandering to radical Islam,” he said. “What he said last night is untrue and in accurate. The fact is this is not about religious liberty.”

Mr. Gingrich said the proposed mosque would be a symbol of Muslim “triumphalism” and that building the mosque near the site of the Sept. 11 attacks “would be like putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum.”